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Functionalism (psychology)
Functional psychology or functionalism refers to a general psychological philosophy that considers mental life and behavior in terms of active adaptation to the person's environment.Gary R. VandenBos, ed., APA Dictionary of Psychology (2006). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association As such, it provides the general basis for developing psychological theories not readily testable by controlled experiments and for applied psychology. Definition Chomsky (1975) commented that it is a peculiarity of intellectual history that physical structures, like legs, are taken to be genetically determined whilst mental structures, like those responsible for speech, are thought to be products of the social environment. Understanding that this distinction is incorrect is an important first step in understanding functionalism. This is because just as legs have been selected by evolution for their function so too have mental faculties. Turing (1950) noted this teleological functional property of brains and analogized it to the computer, which has been designed to function. In particular, whilst computers are physical devices with electronic substrate that perform computations on inputs to give outputs so brains are physical devices with neural substrate that perform computations on inputs which produce behaviors. While this comparison may be fictional rather than fundamental it helps show that functionalism is the theoretical level between the physical implementation and behavioral output (March, 1982). Therefore, it is different from its predecessors of Cartesian dualism advocating discrete mental and physical substances and Skinnerian behaviorism and physicalism declaring only physical substances because it is only concerned with the effective functions of the brain, through its organization or its software programs. More formally, functionalism says that mental states are constituted by their causal relations to one another and to sensory inputs and behavioral outputs (Block, 1996). History Functionalism arose in the U.S. in the late 19th century as an alternative to structuralism."functionalism." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 08 Mar. 2011. While functionalism never became a formal school, it built on structuralism's concern for the anatomy of the mind and led to greater concern over the functions of the mind, and later to behaviorism. Functionalism was a philosophy opposing the prevailing structuralism of psychology of the late 19th century. Edward Titchener, the main structuralist, gave psychology its first definition as a science of the study of mental experience, of consciousness, to be studied by trained introspection. William James is considered to be the founder of functional psychology. Although he would not consider himself as a functionalist, nor did he truly like the way science divided itself into schools. John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, Harvey A. Carr, and especially James Rowland Angell were the main proponents of functionalism at the University of Chicago. Another group at Columbia, including notably James McKeen Cattell, Edward L. Thorndike, and Robert S. Woodworth, were also considered functionalists and shared some of the opinions of Chicago's professors. Egon Brunswik represents a more recent, but Continental, version. The functionalists retained an emphasis on conscious experience. Behaviorists also rejected the method of introspection but criticized functionalism because it was not based on controlled experiments and its theories provided little predictive ability. B.F. Skinner was a developer of behaviorism. He did not think that considering how the mind affects behavior was worthwhile, for he considered behavior simply as a learned response to an external stimulus. Yet, such behaviorist concepts tend to deny the human capacity for random, unpredictable, sentient decision-making, further blocking the functionalist concept that human behavior is an active process driven by the individual. Perhaps, a combination of both the functionalist and behaviorist perspectives provides scientists with the most empirical value, but, even so, it remains philosophically and physiologically difficult to integrate the two concepts without raising further questions about human behavior. For instance, consider the interrelationship between three elements the human environment, the human autonomic nervous system our fight or flight muscle responses, and the human somatic nervous system our voluntary muscle control. The behaviorist perspective explains a mixture of both types of muscle behavior, whereas the functionalist perspective resides mostly in the somatic nervous system. It can be argued that all behavioral origins begin within the nervous system, prompting all scientists of human behavior to possess basic physiological understandings, something very well understood by the functionalist founder William James. Contemporary descendants Evolutionary psychology is based on the idea that knowledge concerning the function of the psychological phenomena affecting human evolution is necessary for a complete understanding of the human psyche. Even the project of studying the evolutionary functions of consciousness is now an active topic of study. Like evolutionary psychology, James's functionalism was inspired by Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection.Schacter, Daniel L.; Wegner, Daniel & Gilbert, Daniel. 2007. Psychology. Worth Publishers. pp. 26–7 Problems with Functionalism Inverted Spectra Consider the character Kate being asked to establish if the replies on her computer were from a human or computer (see Turing, 1950), ticking Human on the supplied red paper and then exiting the laboratory passing a Chinese man on the way coming out of another door. Ignoring most of these details for the moment, consider if the red paper Kate made her response on were green to Kate because she had undergone surgery as an infant and had her green and red vision inverted although was still brought up to identify green objects really red as red and vice versa. Indeed, if Kate were to have a twin who did not have the operation they would both report that the piece of paper was red, even thought Kate was experiencing green. This thought experiment using inverted spectra (Block and Fodor, 1972) presents a prima facie argument against functionalism because Kate and her twin experience two states that are functionally commensurate but qualitatively dissimilar (Block, 1994). The notion that Kate and her twin can have two different qualia the experience of experience but remain functionally indifferent clearly demonstrates that functionalism is not robust enough to explain individual differences in qualia. Block (1980) also argues against the functionalist proposal of multiple realizabilty, where hardware implementation is irrelevant because only the functional level is important. Block considers if the billion or so neurons in a brain were given functionally equivalent electronic substitutes fitted with radios to communicate and distributed to the Chinese population if China would have qualia. He thinks it could not and argues that functionalism is inadequate accordingly. The Chinese Room If Kate were mistaken and a computer really were responding with such mastery then might we assume that the computer was conscious? Indeed, the problems of functionalism are most clear when its role in consciousness is examined. If functionalism is correct then all thinking, including the feeling of consciousness, can be explained by computations (Penrose, 1994). However, supposing Kate were talking to a computer except that the computer’s functional level were represented by the Chinese man she saw on the way out. The Chinese man would be in another room with a huge database describing the outputs to give from any inputs on his screen. At Kate’s end she is seeing conversationally appropriate English responses to her responses and yet the Chinese man who speaks no English understands nothing except that for x input he is to give you. This altered version of the thought experiment, The Chinese Room by Searle (1980) shows how functionalism could be false because in acting as the program executing instructions the Chinese man lacks intentionality and is only concerned with syntactic procedures rather than semantic content. Searle pre-empted critics who claimed the ‘system’ as a whole understands by positing that if the Chinese man remembered all the possible instructions and went about his life he still would not understand English. If functionalism is to explain all mental processes it encounters problems in explaining how meaning can be derived from pure computation. Inductive Functionalism If Kate’s answer were correct because she was talking to human then we might suppose that the functioning of both her brain and her converser’s to be roughly the same during their conversation. For example, both would be reading words on their screen. In a psychological investigation some variable, such as word length, might be manipulated to measure the effect on another variable, say, reaction time from which some inference about reading might be made. This describes the inductive scientific method, where reasoning is made from observed facts. However, if the example is continued and the investigation finds that longer words take longer to respond to there are several interpretations that can be made. One is that the word recognition is serial, letter by letter. Another is that it is parallel letters are processed all at once but longer words require more lexical ‘post-recognition’ processing. The details here are not important; however, what is important is that inductive functionalism is very bad at accurately determining what functions are performed by the brain. The problem can be made clearer if Kate’s answer were incorrect and her converser were a computer. Assuming the outputs and inputs remained the same then it is not necessarily the case that processing is the same between human and computer, just as one clock’s mechanism may be different from another’s although they have the same inputs and show the same time. In any case, this is a serious problem for functionalist cognitive science because where multiple explanations exist it may be impossible to ascribe one correctly or, worse, possible to ascribe one incorrectly Rejoinders As has been shown one of the central arguments against functionalism is that it fails to account for the qualitative aspects of minds or qualia. However, such arguments intuitively assume qualia exists but does not in anything else, which is tantamount to circularity. No evidence exists that qualia exists or does not exist and therefore it is not clear if humans do not have it or China does. Some functionalists believe China would have qualia but that due to the size it is impossible to imagine China being conscious Lycan, 1987. Indeed, it may be the case that we are constrained by our theory of mind e.g. Baron-Cohen, Leslie and Frith, 1985 and will never be able to understand what Chinese consciousness is like. Therefore, if functionalism is true either qualia will exist across all hardware or it will not exist at all but is illusory Dennett, 1990. However, whichever of these is true the problem of obtaining semantic content from syntactic operations remains. The systems reply is a rejoinder, which claims as a whole the system understands Chinese and that the ‘processor’ does not just as a neuron would not Harnad, 2001. However, the issue is still moot. Finally, inductive functionalism is problematic because of the risk of false conclusions. These will be greatly reduced, but not avoided, by continuous empirical hypothesis-testing and peer criticism. Furthermore, a multidisciplinary approach integrating neuroscience, psychology and evolutionary biology will allow more data to converge on theories and models which will reduce the risk Mundale and Bechtel, 1996. However, of all the arguments made against functionalism the risk of false conclusion is the most damaging and, unfortunately, is largely unavoidable. Summary Modern cognitive science is reliant on one position in its theoretical approach to research. This theory called functionalism stems from the notion that the brain has evolved to better the survival of its carrier by acting as an information processor. In processing information the brain is considered to execute functions, similar to those executed by a computer, in particular positing that mental states are defined by their causal relations between inputs, outputs and other functional states. However, this approach has been attacked on several fronts. The main argument is that whilst functionalism is adequate in explaining much of the brain it is not robust enough to explain subjective experience or qualia. Thought experiments have demonstrated that twins could be functionally commensurate but have different qualia and that multiple realizabilty could make China functionally identical to the human brain but without qualia. Equally, China could have qualia but which we are incapable of understanding. Similarly, qualia may not exist as a measurable phenomenon but as an illusion created by other processes of the mind. Another criticism levelled has been that computation lacks intentionality and that from syntax semantics cannot emerge; however no consensus has been reached on the validity of this claim. Finally, with functionalism there a serious risk of false conclusions being made, and this is perhaps where the framework is most vulnerable. See also References *Baron-Cohen, S., Leslie, A., & Frith, U. (1985). Does the autistic child have a "theory of mind"? Cognition 21, 37-46 *Block, N. & Fodor, J. 1972, “What Psychological States Are Not,” Philosophical Review, 83, 159-181 *Block, N. (1980). Introduction: what is functionalism? Readings in philosophy of psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. *Block, N. (1994). Qualia. In S. Guttenplan (ed), A Companion to Philosophy of Mind. Oxford: Blackwell *Block, N. (1996). What is Functionalism? The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy Supplement. New York: MacMillan Reference Books *Chomsky, N. (1975). Reflections on language. New York: Pantheon *Dennett, D. (1990) Quining Qualia. In W. Lycan, (ed), Mind and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwells *Harnad, S (2001) What's Wrong and Right About Searle's Chinese Room Argument? In Bishop, M. and Preston, J., (Eds.) Essays on Searle's Chinese Room Argument. Oxford University Press. *Lycan, W. (1987) Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. *Marr, D. (1982). Vision: A Computational Approach. San Francisco: Freeman & Co. *Mundale, J. and Bechtel, W. (1996). Integrating Neuroscience, Psychology, and Evolutionary Biology Through a Teleological Conception of Function. Minds and Machines, 6, 481-505. *Penrose, R. (1994). Shadows of the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. *Searle, J.R. (1980) Minds, brains, and programs. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 3 (3), 417-457 *Thorndike, Edward L. & Woodworth, Robert S. (1901a). The influence of improvement in one mental function upon the efficiency of other functions (I). Psychological Review, 8, 247-261 Full text] *Thorndike, Edward L. & Woodworth, Robert S. (1901b). The influence of improvement in one mental function upon the efficiency of other functions: II. The estimation of magnitudes. Psychological Review, 8, 384-395. Full text *Thorndike, Edward L. & Woodworth, Robert S. (1901c). The influence of improvement in one mental function upon the efficiency of other functions: III. Functions involving attention, observation, and discrimination. Psychological Review, 8, 553-564.Full text *Turing, A.M. (1950) Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Mind, 49, 433-460. Category:Cognition Category:History of psychology Category:Philosophy of science Category:Philosophy of mind Category:Philosophy Category:Psychological theories